Thursday, January 24, 2013

This picture has
already appeared on other related blogs, and shows John Paton’s Larger Hope
Church in his home town of Almont.

Paton was expelled from
the Baptists for teaching conditional immortality, and so built an Advent
Church in Almont in 1872. As he moved into Universalism (and so parted from
CTR) his Church became known as the Larger Hope Church. According to the book “Almont, The Tale of Then and Now” by Hildamae Waltz
Bowman page 91 (1985 edition) from where the picture comes, it was
founded in 1872 with fifteen members and folded twenty-five years later due to
lack of support. By the twentieth century it was no more. Paton’s Buchanan Church
featured in a post below lasted just a little longer.

The church subsequently
became an extra school building, a rug factory, and then a private home. It
still stands to-day in North Bristol Street, Almont. Intrepid net surfers can
try and locate it using Google Earth.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Paton’s Larger
Hope Church (a former Advent Christian Church building) in his home town of
Almont apparently closed before the end of the 19th century.

Its sister
church in Buchanan (pictured above) lasted a little longer. Like the Almont
building, it was another former Adventist Church, and Lizzie Allen was pastor
there for some time around 1890. There was a direct rail link from Buchanan to
Imlay City, about eight miles north of Almont, and this allowed Paton to visit
at will. Newspaper records show funerals conducted in Buchanan by John H Paton
(sometimes as Elder sometimes as Rev.) for members such as Isaac Marble (1901),
Aaron Miller (1904), Clarissa Mead (1905), Mary Miller Mowbray (1907) and Jane
Wagner (1907).

The book
Greetings from Buchanan (Goodsell and Myers 2005) describes how Paton’s
Buchanan Church was ultimately sold off to the Seventh Day Adventists in 1921.
It was then sold to the Church of Christ in the 1950s before eventually being
torn down to make a parking lot.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

We need to see a clear photocopy of J. W. Brite's Eternity: On the Plan of the Ages. This was published by Paton in 1891. A copy is at Harvard Divinity School Library. Our photocopy fund is at zero. Anyone want to help?